The impact of admissions process design on the racial diversity of schools and colleges has sparked heated debates. We study the pipeline into Boston's three public exam schools to understand racial gaps in enrollment. Admission to these schools has historically been based on a combination of grade point average (GPA) and a score on an optional…

This is the first study to investigate the effects of test methods (while-listening performance and post-listening performance) and gender on measured listening ability and brain activation under test conditions. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) was used to examine three brain regions associated with listening comprehension: the…

Scholars believe that computational thinking is one of the essential competencies of the 21st century and computer programming courses have been recognized as a potential means of fostering students' computational thinking. In tradition instruction, PFCT (problem identification, flow definition, coding, and testing) is a commonly adopted procedure…

We present an aggregation scheme that increases power in randomized controlled trials and quasi-experiments when the intervention possesses a robust and well-articulated theory of change. Intervention studies using longitudinal data often include multiple observations on individuals, some of which may be more likely to manifest a treatment effect…

Students in the local school district have continued to score below the state average on the standardized American Literature end-of-course (EOC) assessment. It was unclear what 9th-, 10th-, and 11th-grade teachers in the district were doing to prepare students for success on the American Literature EOC. The purpose of this basic qualitative study…

This dissertation examined how the perception of the achievement-emotion of boredom impacted the academic agency of sixth-grade mathematics students. The study for this dissertation was completed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through an explanatory sequential mixed methods study, sixth-grade mathematics student volunteers from a Midwest middle…

The Indiana Department of Education's (IDOE) Accessibility and Accommodations Guidance is intended for school-level personnel and decision-making teams as they prepare for and implement Indiana State Assessments. Information is provided for school personnel to use in selecting and administering universal tools, designated features, and…

Two families of analysis methods can be used for differential item functioning (DIF) analysis. One family is DIF analysis based on observed scores, such as the Mantel-Haenszel (MH) and the standardized proportion-correct metric for DIF procedures; the other is analysis based on latent ability, in which the statistic is a measure of departure from…

Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) have become ubiquitous as a form of assessment in medical education but involve substantial resource demands and considerable local variation. A detailed understanding of the processes by which OSCEs are designed and administered could improve feasibility and sustainability. This exploration of…

This paper reports an approximate replication of Matsuda and Gobel (2004) for the psychometric validation of the Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale (FLRAS). Their study examined the structural aspects of the FLRAS developed by Saito, Horwitz, and Garza (1999). The results showed that the FLRAS measured three different subcomponents of foreign…

Over the past decades, the application of Rasch measurement in language assessment has gradually increased. In the present study, we coded 215 papers using Rasch measurement published in 21 applied linguistics journals for multiple features. We found that seven Rasch models and 23 software packages were adopted in these papers, with many-facet…

Literature review shows that the development process of an achievement test is mainly investigated in dissertations. Moreover, preparing a form that will shed light on developing an achievement test is expected to guide those who will administer the test. In this line, the current study aims to create an "Achievement Test Development Process…

Cheating in examinations across the globe is an issue of growing concern. This study argues that the culture of cheating in exams in Balochistan has reduced the efficiency of human resource and has resulted in producing students with high qualifications but less potential in the province. Therefore, it is very important to explore the factors…

Individuals who want to earn a doctoral degree aim to change or develop their careers. Some potential doctoral students have a clear goal to pursue a doctoral degree, some are uncertain if they can manage the rigor associated with a doctorate program, and others might have already been involved in their program. This article aims to provide…

Recent studies have shown that exposure to a novel environment may stabilize the persistence of weak memories, a phenomenon often attributed to a process referred to as "behavioral tagging." While this phenomenon has been repeatedly demonstrated in adult animals, no studies to date have examined whether it occurs in infant animals, which…